


Til The Charade Ends

by Headspacedeficit



Series: How far can you carry this? [3]
Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-06
Updated: 2017-03-06
Packaged: 2018-09-28 15:37:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10129196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Headspacedeficit/pseuds/Headspacedeficit
Summary: Jack Drake wasn't made for fatherhood. But he was made to understand that coming into fatherhood wasn't always planned.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I always think that some characters get overlooked and I think that Tim, while he doesn’t have much of a relationship with his parents that we see and Bruce becomes a second dad to him, is still influenced by his parents. And I got to thinking why a man who was content to ignore his son for years would suddenly try to take such an active role in the kid’s life and still manage to come off as very false. The idea that Janet’s death was the reason struck me as paltry because I’ve seen and read plenty of father-son relationships that go nowhere good after a death in the family regardless of where it was before. And then I thought about where Tim would get some of his traits that commonly get taken to extremes: secrecy, curiosity, dedication, lack of genuine people skills. Say what you will about Tim Drake, guy’s not exactly a manual in interpersonal relationships.

           It wasn’t that he had a sense of integrity or duty to his country.  That was mostly nonsense or the brainwashed excuse others used to pretend they were doing something noble.  Jack had no illusions of nobility.  He came from noble stock and the only thing that gave nobility right was might: the might of money and the assuredness that came with making the rules.

           Jack Drake didn’t become a spy for anything less than to satisfy personal curiosity.  Because Jack Drake, while not particularly invested in anyone, wanted to know Things about people.  It’s why he went into business and why he studied anthropology and why he likes archeology and why he’d picked up seven different languages since kindergarten.  Jack Drake likes the things around people.  He likes to know the things people revolve around themselves.  It makes him exceptionally suited to government work.

           They pair him with Janet.  Janet whose last name is certainly fake since she has been in one system or another since the day she existed but it’s not like it matters anyways because **Janet**.  Janet who made a first impression memorable by tripping people over their own words and motivations so well on so little intel.  Janet who worked neatly on nearly no information.  It made her exceptionally suited to government work.

           Janet who threw out the self-important football jock illusion of him within the first minute.  Janet who saw him for what he was.  Janet who saw a library when others thought they saw an encyclopedia.  Janet who became the only person he ever made an effort to know not just know about.  

           They were paired together because they wreaked absolute havoc on anyone else.  Jack was slow.  Knowing Things about people took time and meticulousness and more listening than most people had the patience for.  Jack needed puzzle pieces to put together pictures.  Janet was fast.  Janet zipped into assignments and blew right through them because she had people pegged.  Janet was motivated in finding motivations which made for very effective interrogation but yielded not much in the way of evidence.  Judges and juries like evidence.

           Dealing with Janet felt like being run over.  Dealing with Jack felt like being picked apart.  Coworkers and superiors were not exempt from this compulsion which did not make either of them suited to government work.

           Janet had told him that they’d been paired because higher ups thought that they would even each other out.  Their superiors expected them to compromise their methods thinking that they were just that: methods.  It had been an inside joke after she’d told him: a little thing that, even in Haiti, had brought a smirk to Janet’s face.

           Maybe he’d loved her.  He knew that he cared about her when he thought about the things they collected together and the trinkets he brought to her the way a crow brings mathoms back to roost.  He was nearly sure that Janet loved him as much as she could love anyone if the way she drove away strangers from their stranger partnership was any indication.

           Twenty-five years together and married for twenty.  Jack would say that if that wasn’t love then he didn’t know what was except for the fact that he’d grown up surrounded by the glamor and glitz of infidelity and broken marriages kept together by the threat of divorce settlements and shame.  They hadn’t stayed together because of either of those but hadn’t tied themselves together for the traditional reasons either.

           He’d grown used to Janet by his side, filling in things he couldn’t touch and didn’t intuitively understand.  The place she’d left empty felt like marching with an unbalanced pack.

           It hurt more than the evidence said it should.

 

           The agency discouraged pregnancy and children in pairs like theirs.  Even with their bland little spot in the Gotham Society Pages (on slow days when a Wayne or a Vale or a Kane wasn't doing something outrageously more interesting), the jet setting, archeologists Drakes flew under the radar.  Children were complications.  Children were not authorized.

           But Janet had wanted and so Janet had set out to do.

           Janet hadn’t wanted a baby.  Janet wanted something between an heir and a son.  

                           Timothy.

           Janet claimed that Timothy was coded to be a people pleaser.  Jack could look at the house they left empty for assignments and the achievements Timothy lined the shelves with and the data said conditioning.  But Timothy was Janet’s project and Jack wasn’t really a father.

           The boy was charming, in his own way.  Janet was his guiding star and anything she wanted him to do, Timothy did.  While they were there, at least.

           They talked about it, a time or two, when they were in the field.

           Once, they were at a rundown little Swiss church and the temperature had dropped to below freezing when Janet brought it up.  They couldn’t move due to the snowstorm howling outside and they weren’t leaving until they had the sight and audio of their targets conspiring and Jack had a chance to go through the library.

           Her voice caught on her lips and spiraled into his brain.  He heard her under the howling wind whisper that Timothy would be strong.  Timothy would be independent.  Timothy would claim what he needed.  Timothy would survive when no one else would.

           Jack said nothing.  Timothy wasn’t his.  Timothy was Janet’s.  Janet’s most prized creation.  Timothy was Janet’s son.

           So, he thinks it’s fair to say that when he comes out of a coma with legs that don’t quite work and no Janet, he took things rather hard and might have felt a little too much like he was living in a soap opera.  This was not the way he had planned his life going.

           But Janet’s son needed a father who wasn’t a trauma victim with unresolved PTSD and out of the two options for the boy, Jack at least hadn’t gotten a child under his care murdered yet, so it fell to him to step up.  Jack bargained and threatened.  Jack made sure that Janet’s son never saw him as anything other than the greatest fatherly figure he could cut.

Lies are so much easier to swallow when it’s what you want to hear.

           Because he promised her.  He promised Janet that he would keep her secrets and watch her back and he promised her that he would protect her son that storming day under a god that neither of them belong to.  He’d whispered it back to her like the truth and so truth it became.

              He’d promised her.


End file.
